Performed by Sarah Cahill: piano; Da Capo Chamber Players: violin, cello, piano, flute, clarinet; Bernard Gann: electric bass. "Kyle Gann (b.1955) is a composer whose music inevitably is structured with an array of metric, harmonic and melodic ideas and strategies that would seem to guarantee it to be beyond listenable in its complexity. However, the opposite is in fact what the listener receives. The work is deeply felt, lyrically clear and driven by song. Gann is also known to the musical world as an author and critic, and teaches in the music department at Bard College. Private Dances (2004) is so hot, so longing with yearning, so lonely with the blues, so salacious in its undressing of the unsuspecting listener, that it could properly carry one a warning sticker. It is a 'listener beware' collection in six movements -- sexy, sad, sentimental, sultry, saintly, swingin'. The pianist, Sarah Cahill (one of the generation's premier 'woman on piano' performers) leaves you, the innocent listener, with nothing; she took it all. This piece is what was going on in the mind of the guy at the end of the counter in the Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks."

"There is no musical group today that compares to the Brooklyn-based Slow Six. Since the beginning, their compositional detail, instrumental prowess, and live computer-music instruments separated them from other electro-acoustic troupes. This latest release Nor'easter presents their most ambitious musical vision to date. Their amplified violins, viola, cello, electric guitars, Fender Rhodes, piano, and software instruments now combine in a new language of experimental instrumental storytelling, remaining physically immersive and emotionally-charged. Each work presents its own evocative landscape, guiding listeners through inescapably personal and spellbinding electrified sonic adventures. The intimacy of strings and piano combine with rock and roll's electric guitars and Fender Rhodes within a storm of interactive computer textures to defy cultural pigeonholing. This is a new sound free of 'cross-over' conceit -- simply the sound of a new native musical space, a new generation of distinctly American music."

"These three pieces deliver in the clearest manner the extraordinary compositional voice of Ge Gan-ru (b.1954) . His life journey is now a somewhat familiar story of the generation of Chinese artists in the late twentieth century... of a childhood in music, of being sent to forced labor camp as a teenager, of being a professor under the communist regime, of getting away to New York and establishing a life there. The earliest piece presented, 'Yi Feng' (Lost Style) was written for his student, Frank Su Huang, in Shanghai in 1983. Its premiere caused a scandal and was denounced. Even today, 25 years later, the raw power and terrifyingly deep explosions in sound of the cello tuned in fourths down an octave, evoke an avant-garde in response to a world of imposed order. 'Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!' was written in 2006 for Gan-ru's friend and collaborator, Margaret Leng Tan. It is a Peking Opera-style voice setting for a poem from 1155 in which the woman (who was wronged) leaves nothing left behind in expressing her anguish. This melodrama is crooned, screamed, uttered, cajoled, hummed, whispered, wept and sung by the inimitable Ms. Tan, who also accompanies her self with an ensemble of toy instruments that can be found in most Chinatowns. 'Four Studies for Peking Opera' (2003) is a serious and recognizably traditional essay in the canon of piano and quartet literature. It is in four movements -- Prologue, Aria, Narrative, and Clown Music. The piano serves primarily as an incarnation of the percussion section for the Peking Opera, and is variously prepared to render gongs, cymbals, wood blocks, zithers and so on."

"These 26 pieces for 1961 Fender Precision bass are comprised of two sets of miniature and minimalist cycles, recorded entirely over two separate days in Los Angeles area studios; each contains the briefest treatment that Roden could manage to convey the feelings and sensations at hand; they are as finite and elusive as leaves on a tree, as pearls on a string; a kind of melodic meditation -- there is an idea, seeds, flowers... a kind of a musical seed catalog in a med/mex ambient light, with a socal samba lurking beneath, or maybe an offering for spiritual equilibrium."

"The Deep Spaces, the most recent in my series of bowed piano compositions, is a fantasy song-cycle celebrating the power and grandeur evoked by poets and composers over two millennia -- of one of the world's most dazzling and enchanting locales: Lake Como, surely the brightest jewel in the crown of the Alps and mountain lakes that adorn Italy's far north, just below Switzerland. The song texts, set for soprano soloist with the ensemble serving as accompanying orchestra (and, occasionally, chorus), are taken from writers as distant in time, culture, psychology and aesthetic stance from on another as Pliny the Younger, aristocratic native of Como and chronicler of many aspects of Roman life in the first and second centuries A.D., William Wordsworth, whose poetry celebrates both the Lake District of hi native England and the Italian Lake District he loved, and Pablo Medina, a twenty-first century poet and novelist of Cuban ancestry residing and teaching in New York. Listeners may also recognize musical themes and motives I have borrowed from composers linked to Como and the Italian mountains such as Liszt and Berlioz, weaving them together with my own melodies and textures. The Bowed Piano Ensemble was founded at Colorado College in 1977, has evolved into a small orchestra whose wide range of sound colors and textures are all coaxed from one open grand piano by ten musicians wielding nylon filament, horsehair, hand-held piano hammers, guitar picks, and other devices."

"Erdem Helvagioglu first broke through to the international audience with his Walk Through the Bazaar...a collection of sounds from the bazaar in Istanbul that he worked to create an emotional tour. On this record the listener is presented with the performer, on live guitar with live electronics and processing. This kind of work is straight up 'new music' and has strong affinities to the downtown, improvised and modern classical currents that are being played throughout the capitals of the world. His sensibility is not obviously Turkish, though, but more of a cosmopolitan wanderer into and through the situations this type of musical theater creates. Once music starts there is a force of time that is continually active with the sounds that are happening. In composed music the composer invents the framework and the performer lives within it. In this style of live electronics the sense of time, of a current pushing the moment, is stronger...chaos beckons. Helvacioglu comes into circumstances where reality begins to come apart, threatening to collapse the song, and then melodic hooks bring the player and listener back to familiar terrain. This work is haunting, almost disturbing, at times and then builds from those elements into lyrical passages of beauty in song. Altered Realities is an album of solo acoustic guitar and live electronics. All of the textures were created based only on the acoustic guitar signal with no external sound source used during the recording. Within these textures, there are long sustaining single notes, beautiful shimmering chords and rhythmic clusters."

"A collection of chamber works that continue Marshall's unique journey in a spiritual musical language through visiting medieval, sacred and world sources. The effect of his music acts as a prayer of offering in a highly personal fashion which, because of it, allows the listener a more universal experience." The Tudor Choir; Sarah Cahill, piano; Joe Kubera, piano; Benjamin Verdery, guitar.

"I grew up believing musical boundaries to be porous, flowing into one another: my father playing chamber music and Gypsy violin, my grandmother's Yiddish chorus, my mother's Folkways collection, plus the radio, open-minded teachers, and my own garage prog-rock excursions. At age 19 I heard Balinese gamelan, I spent long periods there in the 1980s and started my own ensemble, Gamelan Galak Tika, in 1993. These pieces from the last five years live in the margins, between musical traditions -- classical and popular, western and eastern." -- E.Z.

Mostly works for female voice, performed by Marianne Schuppe (mezzo soprano). The opening "Sauh I-IV" (from 1973, for voice with magnetic tape) features layers of Schuppe's voice, in impressive, polyphonic style -- a great antidote for those of those of us living in fear of the "operatic wail". "Giacinto Scelsi was one of the most individual voices in the history of music. His music stands outside the schools that responded to world events and exists as a monument to itself -- utterly honest and almost indescribable, reminiscent of a statue in Rome but in his case it is a statue of the imagination. Now, a hundred years from his birth, his music is still shocking; almost twenty years from his death, it is nearly fathomable -- and clearly music. These songs may have been created by improvisations that have been recomposed and transcribed, and may have begun as recordings of the natural world, or inspired by a series of sounds, Among the musicians Scelsi worked with was the Japanese singer Michiko Hiryoyama, and this collection by Marianne Schuppe is inspired and informed by those pioneering performances in the 70's. Marianne Schuppe is a very well known vocalist of modern classical and avant garde repertoire throughout Europe. Her technique and intelligence inform an innate ability that allows her to move from 'song' to 'sound' to 'speech' in a lyrical and fluid manner."

"This collection of new classical Latin American work by the Cuban born, Miami based, composer Orlando Jacinto Garcia is a series of pieces that involve lyrical acts of memory set against a time free present. There are abstract references to music listened to by the composer in his past. Repetition and slow evolution of materials result in a temporal stasis which is similar in effect to some Asian and Latin American ethnic music -- the perception of the moment is of utmost importance. The exploration of the counterpoint between register, densities, timbres, and pacing are the aesthetic basis for the music. Great core is given to the point where silence begins and sound ends. At times the music seems to be far away, like the chiming of church bells in a distant town, or a memory of childhood, or an insight almost grasped -- kind of twinkling like a night sky; and at other times it is strong and intense, full of current and direction, deep colors and powerful gestures."

"Joan Jeanrenaud's journey to the present began on a small farm in Tennessee, school in Indiana, then followed with 20 years as the cellist of the Kronos Quartet. In 1999 she chose to leave the group and began to seek her identity as an individual artist. The six pieces on Metamorphosis are either written for her or arranged by her. They evolved during residencies over two years that became a solo show of the same name. The work is deeply personal and in its own way her tour of the instrument's colors and feelings in acoustic and electronic medium." Includes works by: Phillip Glass, Hamza El Din, Steve Mackey, Karen Tanaka, Mark Grey and Jeanrenaud.

"Two extended works by Richard Teitelbaum for shakuhachi and synthesizer with percussion and bass accompaniment. Teitelbaum was one of the founders of the revolutionary MEV group in Rome, which explored live electroacoustic and collective improvisation in the 60's and 70's. Subsequent to that era he began work with the renowned shakuhachi master, teacher and composer, Yokoyama and began on a course of intercultural music. These works express his unique language and nuances of sound color which have given him a cult recognition among avant garde composers and audiences. Blends, 1977, a kind of circumnavigation, is an exploration of the shakuhachi's timbral world in an extended dialog with Moog synthesizers, a pairing that was quite controversial at the time. Kyotaku/Denshi, 1995, is more of an historical tour that follows a trajectory of Japanese history through the shakuhachi, from its roots of the travelling monks through various episodes of religious, artistic and secular events."

Complete title: Complete Harpsichord Works, Music for Tack Piano & Fortepiano, In Historic and Experimental Tunings. Performed by Linda Burman-Hall, keyboards. "Although for several centuries keyboards were made that presented more than twelve tones, the hypnosis of twelve has continued, and continues to spread wherever 'Western' culture settles in. Even here there are apostates. The important composer Harry Partch built an entire orchestra for his works written in a forty-three tone scale. Younger people still do this and, in addition, tend to show tunings by means of 'lattices'. In this fine recording of my keyboard works, Linda and I have become a part of such apostasy from the dull grey of industrial twelve tone equal temperament and worked together to take back to ourselves as artists the natural right to tune pieces in ways that are fitting, appropriate, or enhance musical beauty." -- Lou Harrison

Performed by Frederic Rzewski, piano. "Twenty years on, Cardew's music still provokes controversy. Even amongst his many admirers, his later 'political' music in particular creates unease and perhaps misgivings. The relation of the music to its 'programme' and to the lofty aims it purports to serve is problematic enough, so let us remind ourselves what Cardew himself wrote about this music in the seventies: 'I have discontinued composing music in an avant-garde idiom for a number of reasons: the exclusiveness of the avant-garde, its fragmentation, its indifference to the real situation in the world today, its individualistic outlook and not least its class character (the other characteristics are virtually products of this). "We Sing For The Future" is a composition based on a song. The song is for youth, who face bleak prospects in a world dominated by imperialism, and whose aspirations can only be realised through the victory of revolution and socialism. In the framework of a solo piano piece lasting about 12 minutes, something of this great struggle is conveyed. The music is not programmatic, but relies on the fact that music has meaning and can be understood quite straightforwardly as part of the fabric of what is going on in the world.' Rzewski's interpretations of these two works are wholly admirable, the performances compelling, and the two improvisations towards the conclusion of 'We Sing For The Future' -- an unexpected bonus -- are quite magnificent. He stretches the boundaries of style and musical language drawn up by Cardew without rupturing them, and, at the end of the improvisations, Cardew's music is ushered back, seamlessly and convincingly. In the second improvisation we are reminded of the great Bach/Liszt transcriptions; there can be no higher praise. Cardew would certainly have approved the inclusion of the improvisations and would have relished the verve and boldness of Rzewski's playing." -- John Tilbury

Solo piano works, composed and performed by Riley, recorded live on 7/16/95. "Riley's travels across the musical map find a home base in these solo piano pieces. This album distills a career of experience as a barroom piano player, student of Indian and Western classical traditions, founder of minimalism, advocate of just intonation, composer/improviser, and master of many keyboards. Interestingly, this synthesis takes place in each piece. Ideas shift and transform organically and seamlessly, one melting into another by imperceptible increments, until you realize the music has metamorphosed radically into something very different. It's astonishing that such a diverse range of elements can coalesce, across the entire keyboard, from a visceral rumbling bass to ecstatic figurations in the highest register." --Sarah Cahill.